On Friday, June 6, 2025, US District Judge Claudia Wilken of the United States District Court, Northern District of California, Oakland Division, finally approved the $2.8 billion settlement agreement arising from Case No. 4:20-cv-03919-CW In re: College Athlete NIL Litigation (“Settlement Agreement”), a class action lawsuit against the NCAA and the Power Five Conferences challenging their rules restricting payments to student-athletes, including payments related to student-athletes names, images, and likenesses (NIL) for commercial purposes. The Settlement Agreement will reshape college sports by allowing universities to pay student-athletes directly starting July 1, 2025, effectively ending the NCAA’s longstanding argument that student-athletes are amateurs and should, therefore, not be paid.   

On May 23, 2024, the NCAA and the Power 5 conferences announced a $2.8 billion settlement that was reached in several antitrust class action lawsuits concerning payment for college athletes. The settlement marked a watershed moment, effectively sounding the death knell of “amateurism,” the longstanding argument by the NCAA for why college athletes should not be paid  in Division I college sports.

The Federal Trade Commission, the agency which administers the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 (“HSR Act”), has announced a number of rule changes to the HSR Act, including annual adjustments to its jurisdictional, filing fee and other dollar-denominated thresholds.

What is the Corporate Transparency Act?

On January 1, 2021, heightened entity and beneficial ownership reporting arrived in the United States with the enactment of the Corporate Transparency Act (the “CTA”), part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021. The policy behind the CTA is to strengthen reporting and transparency as to who the beneficial economic owners are of business enterprises doing business in the United States. Prior to the passage of the CTA, the United States was viewed by some in the international marketplace as a tax haven for those looking to create shell companies to hide their assets through the formation of business entities in jurisdictions like Delaware or Florida, for instance.

 FBARs in a Nutshell and the Concerns 

FBAR Requirements:  Pursuant to the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”) (31 U.S.C. § 5314 et seq.), U.S. persons, individuals and companies, are required on a calendar basis to report each year to the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) all financial interests in and signature authority over foreign financial accounts on FinCen Form 114  Foreign Bank Account Reports (“FBARs”). The FBAR filing threshold is triggered upon having account assets exceeding $10,000 USD in the aggregate at any time during the calendar year. The deadline for filing FBARs is April 15 with an automatic extension to October 15 each year.

On December 15, 2022, The National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) handed down a finding of merit in Case 31-CA-290326 brought by the National College Players Association (“NCPA”) on behalf of men’s and women’s basketball and football players that charged the University of Southern California (“USC”), the PAC-12 Conference (“PAC-12”) and the National Collegiate Athletics Association (“NCAA”) with an unfair labor practice, alleging they had systematically misclassified players as “student-athlete” nonemployees instead of employees to prevent the athletes from realizing their rights under the National Labor Relations Act.